Cricket: I WAS PRAWN TO BE WILD.

Byline: MIKE WALTERS

THERE'S one prawn every minute in the city where England cricketers scoff shellfish at their peril.

Nine years ago Graham Gooch, Mike Gatting and Robin Smith were laid low by a plate of prawns the night before a Test match in Madras.

Call me more prawn than brain if you like, but I went back to the same Chinese restaurant where Gooch and Gatt came to grief - and ordered you-know-what as my pre-match meal before yesterday's one-day international.

And your intrepid Mirror cricket writer has so far lived to tell the tale.

King-size, deep-fried and big enough to frighten a crayfish, they were. I thought I was being sent out here to earn a crust, not arm-wrestle a crustacean.

It was a rather different story when Gooch, Gatting and Smith made their fateful selection from the menu in the Golden Dragon at the Taj Coromandel hotel in 1993. They thought the world was their lobster as they tucked into their evening meal.

But before you could say 'scampi and chips' Gooch was ruled out of the Test after a violent gastric disagreement. Gatting and Smith both played in the Test, but their only significant runs were dashes to the smallest room.

Although the menus here have more seafood than Molly Malone could shake a stick at, Nasser Hussain's England have been less adventurous in their choice of cuisine.

Instead of cockles, crayfish and calamary, they have been choosing pasta, pizza and pilau. You're missing a treat, fellas. I bet you fifty squid my lunch was tastier than yours.

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FEEDING HIS FACE: Walters tucks in